Summary: Repentance is an invitation to respond to the grace and truth of God, which is ever drawing nearer to us. And it is more than a casual tinkering of the soul or correcting a few bad habits. The coming kingdom of God transforms our lives.
Imagine this: an envelope arrives in your mailbox. It appears like any other holiday card. It was a plain white envelope, not green, red or gold. When opened, the card does not portray the holy family, a starlit night or a team of camels. Instead, there is a burly figure with a grim look on his face. If the message was not clear, the inside of the card was inescapable, "Happy Advent, You Brood of Vipers!" It was signed, "John the Baptist."
He arrives every year on schedule, doesn't he? On the second Sunday of Advent, this strange figure steps right out of the Old Testament to interrupt our festive preparations. John dresses like an ancient prophet in camel's hair. He works in the wilderness, not in the civilized city. He preaches with austerity, countering the heavy shopping and consumption that marks the season. And he calls everyone who can hear him to repent.
Repent is a verb that makes many of us squirm. Sometime in the 1700's, an anonymous preacher came up with a new idea. He seated the worst sinners of his congregation in the front pew. We don't know how they were selected or how they were convinced to sit there, but they became the preacher's targets. The sermon aimed directly at them, attempting to convince the sinners to change their ways. That front row was called the "Mourner's Bench," or sometimes "The Anxious Bench."
With a history like that, it's no wonder why so many people choose to sit in the back of the sanctuary. Either they want to leave the front rows open for those more wretched than themselves, or they want to keep a buffer between the pulpit and their pew out of self-defense.
Isn't that how many people see repentance? They conclude the Christian faith is primarily about behavior, defined in terms of what we should or should not do. As the adage puts it, "Don't drink, dance or chew, or date the girls that do." So, preaching is a harangue against bad behavior, however described or imagined.
In times of moral confusion, some have found it helpful to make a list of "do's" and "don't's." Wrongdoings go in the "don't" column. Blessed assurances go in the "do" column. The instruction is clear: move from the bad column to the good one. Straighten up and fly right. Change your ways. Behave better than before. The list takes on supreme importance. In that kind of religious system, we really don't need a living God. We need a list.
Yet a funny thing happens when people live only by a list of behaviors. They start grading the items on their list. Some sins are perceived as worse than all others. For some reason, smugness and self-righteousness never make most lists. Neither do greed or abuse of power. So, there is no real possibility of repentance. The call is to merely return to the list.
According to the third chapter of Matthew, John the Baptist didn't maintain a list of sins. Instead, he invited people into the presence of God. John the Baptist never assigned anybody to the front pew and barked at them to change. Instead, he announced God was knocking at the door. "The kingdom of heaven has come near," he said. That's the proper context for forgiveness. The beauty of heaven is so close we can almost see it. The purity of heaven is so available that we can embrace it. John the Baptist doesn't wag his finger at bad behavior - he points to God!
His singular sermon is that God is coming toward us. This message brings everybody to the desert. His invitation is to have all sins and mistakes washed away. God is closing in on us. If we perceive it, we will clear the air, straighten our paths and get in closer fellowship.
In a small town in upstate New York, there was a legendary Roman Catholic priest who spent every Friday night in a dingy bar. He didn't go there to drink, but to spend time with people. It was unnerving, particularly for those who had been his confirmation students. They had gone out for a night on the town. When the priest walked in, the crowd always grew quiet. A few lost interest in whatever they were doing and slipped out. Others laughed or turned away. But many of them found him easy to talk with.
As he told one of his friends, "I discovered that if I go to them, they tell me things they would never say in the confessional booth. They admit on Friday night what they would never confess on Sunday morning. If they trust me, if they sense that I come in the name of a God who accepts them as they are, some of them take amazing steps in response to God's love." Now that is the very definition of repentance!
In his day, John the Baptist preached a simple but direct sermon. People came from all over to go where he was. They left behind Jerusalem and its temple to go to the desert to meet God. They left behind the homes, businesses and old routines, to experience the presence and power of God first-hand. They wanted the Real Thing. The mystery and power of it was there all along - it's still right here - but the dust can settle, the zeal can chill, the once-vital faith can become mere habits, and good deeds are downgraded to items on a list.
But what about that "brood of vipers"? This is John the Baptist's critique of the religious leaders who joined the crowds for his baptism. These were the Pharisees and Sadducees, easily identified by their elaborate clothing. Curious, isn't it? They were attracted to John's revival. Was it the spectacle? Did they come out of curiosity? Were they hungry for an encounter with the Holy? We don't know.
What we do know is that John did not grant them any special privileges. The Pharisees were the Bible Keepers, guardians of morality, purists in every regard - and they came to hear the preacher who dined on locusts. The Sadducees were the high brows, the liturgical elite, the religious nobility and the families from which all the highest priests were named. As we heard today, John the Baptist wouldn't give them an inch of preference. He accused them of seeking baptism to slither out of hell. Their sense of privilege was not enough to put them on the right side of God. To paraphrase his words, "It does not matter who your granddaddy was; you are all a brood of vipers." His verbal ax struck at the root of their presumption.
At heart, he was saying that nobody can fake the spiritual life. Either we are living it, or we are not. Either we are responding to God's approach through a generous and holy life, or we risk our spiritual destruction. Are we going through the motions? Showing up only for the benefits of an appearance? Or are we preparing a way for the Lord to reach our hearts, souls, minds and strengths?
Advent announces that God is drawing near. In the ancient promise of the prophet Isaiah, as quoted by Matthew in the passage, we must make a way for God to come closer, removing the roadblocks, straightening the highway, lifting the valleys and leveling the mountains. There can be no excuses, only honesty. No more faking it or putting on appearances, just being real. This is our spiritual work for the season. We replace the artificial with the truth. And God requires evidence that we are willing to be changed by the love of his dominion.
Alfred Delp was a Jesuit priest who resisted Hitler and the Nazis. He paid the ultimate price for it. From a prison camp, he warned his own nation with these words when the nation was intoxicated with power and consumed with mendacity. He wrote,
Advent is the time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves. The necessary condition for the fulfillment of Advent is the renunciation of the presumptuous attitudes and alluring dreams in which and by means of which we always build ourselves imaginary worlds. In this way we force reality to take us to itself by force.1
The Gospel invited us to surrender to God, which is always a surrender to grace. We do not let down our guard because we fear that heaven will hurt us. We let it down because heaven is moving toward us - and heaven can heal us. That is our ultimate hope.
John the Baptist appears in the stark wilderness with a fierce promise. God is on the way. God sees us clearly. We cannot presume that God will take us as we are, so we can change, drop our bad habits, straighten out our souls, name the brokenness that has been lingering far too long and present ourselves for healing. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Help is on the way. The grace of God is right here, right now. And this is the good news of the Gospel.